


even if the skies get rough

by jooheon



Series: SNK zombie apocalypse AU [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-22 03:36:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13755480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jooheon/pseuds/jooheon
Summary: Around the time Marlowe stopped answering his texts, the sirens stopped, too. Jean was out of cereal and out of beer. He was sitting in the living room with a half-empty handle of vodka in his hand when he heard a jarring screech of tires from the sidewalk. Lightheaded, stumbling, he made it to the window just in time to see a big black SUV roll to a shuddering halt on the lawn, and Eren Jaeger tumble out of the driver's seat.





	even if the skies get rough

**Author's Note:**

> A zombie AU I've thought way too much about, heavily inspired by TWD. I lowkey used to post doodles about this on [my tumblr](http://gnatnip.tumblr.com/tagged/snk%20zombie), lol. Also, title from Jason Mraz's "I Won't Give Up" LOL. 
> 
> Also, please don't read if blood and zombies and stuff make you uncomfortable. There's a lot of that.

 

 

The gas station reeked of death. Crouched behind the cash register, Jean buried his nose into the crook of his elbow, but his dirty, month-old flannel was almost just as bad. Next to him, Eren wordlessly reached forward and pried his knife out of the skull of the unmoving biter with a sickening _thwelch_ , and as the red-black blood spurted out feebly, the bad smell got worse.

There was blood everywhere: on both of them, but Eren mostly. On the shoddy, peeling cabinets in a spray of droplets. On the floor, a dark puddle spreading from a gash that had opened up the biter’s ruined innards. The blood crept slowly across the linoleum, closer and closer to where Jean was backed up at the register, threatening to lick at the toes of his sneakers.

“Aw, fuck,” Jean muttered. These were his real shoes, shoes he bought with his own money. Shoes he used to look damn good in, before they got caked in mud and grime and started pulling apart at the seams. Eren was watching him watch the blood inch closer.

“Don’t move,” he hissed, his voice a strained whisper, “don’t even move, don’t even breathe.”

Easy for him to say — his shoes were just some raggedy brown boots he pulled off a corpse two weeks ago.

 “They know we’re in here,” Jean shot back. “They saw us cross the street. Me breathing or not isn’t going to change that.”

“Just shut up,” Eren snapped. He started to inch up slowly, twisting, to peek over the counter. The aisles of the decrepit gas station were narrow, the shelves all but picked clean, the windows dirty but unobscured. Anyone standing out by the pumps would be able to see clear through to them now, if they stood up. Jean swallowed, tried not to breathe.

The door opened with the light jingle of a bell, and Eren scrunched instantly back to the floor. Low voices, deliberate footsteps. Jean’s heart was beating faster now, too fast. As the door squeaked back shut and the footsteps drew slowly closer, he and Eren exchanged a look.

 _How many bullets?_ Eren mouthed.

Jean held up two fingers.

Grimly, Eren held up one.

Jean tried to listen to the number of footfalls, judge how many people had come into the gas station, but it was hard. There had been at least two people out in the street, but now it sounded like there might be three, or even four. One for each bullet, and that was if they were lucky. He tried to loosen his grip on the gun in his right hand, flex his trigger finger. Ignore the single drop of sweat rolling down the side of his neck. The old fight-or-flight was beginning to kick in, and he knew Eren would want to fight, but —

“I know you’re back there, jackasses,” came a low voice. “Get up, get your hands in the air.” The metallic click of a gun being cocked. “Try anything and you’ll be dead before you hit the floor.”

Eren’s eyes were wide and frantic with that look that Jean hated. The look he’d been wearing in the glow of moonlight on that rooftop in Pasadena, the look he’d worn as he’d floored the gas and plowed their SUV through a horde of dead on the highway in Bakersfield. It was the look he always got right before he did something incredibly reckless and stupid.

Before he could think twice about it, Jean cleared his throat.

“Okay,” he said loudly.

Eren clutched at his wrist, dug his fingernails in, hard.

“We’re standing up now. Don’t shoot,” Jean continued, fighting to keep the waver from his voice.

“Jean,” Eren growled. A warning.

“We don’t have a choice,” Jean said, and pried his wrist loose. He got to his feet and swiveled around to find himself looking down the barrel of a shotgun at a dark-haired man with eyebrows drawn, mouth pursed. Another man and a woman flanked him, also brandishing arms. Slowly, Jean set his gun down on the counter and raised his hands up. A beat later, glaring and seething quietly, Eren got up and followed suit.

“Good boys,” said the man holding the shotgun. “Now come on out from behind there.”

“You gonna kill us?” Eren spat, stomping through the pool of blood. “Rob us?”

“Depends,” Shotgun said coolly. “You gonna make trouble for me?”

“No,” Jean said quickly. “We don’t want any trouble. We were looking for food, that’s all. It’s just us two, we were just passing through, and we’ll leave. We’ll leave, we don’t want trouble, right Eren? We don’t want trouble.”

Shotgun said nothing. He still looked like he was thinking about shooting them, but maybe that was just his sour face, those pitch-black eyes.

“Honest to God,” Jean said. There wasn’t enough air in this damn gas station, he thought dizzily. “We don’t want any trouble, we’re passing through, we’re just trying to get home.”

“They’re just _kids_ ,” the woman muttered, almost a plea. Her gun remained leveled at Jean.

“Ask ’em the questions,” said the second man.

“I don’t trust them,” Shotgun said.

“You don’t trust anyone,” said the woman. She addressed Jean now: “How many walkers have you killed?”

“Petra!” Shotgun snapped, his voice low and cold.

“They’re kids, Levi,” the woman said again, coolly now. “And they can fight. We need fighters, remember? Erwin’s orders.”

The two of them glared at each other for a few seconds, and then Shotgun sighed. He turned, stony-faced, back to Jean and Eren. “Answer the question. How many walkers have you killed?”

Jean had to think about it.

“I honestly have no idea,” he said, at the same moment Eren said, “A lot.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“None,” Jean said. He turned to Eren, who’d gone pale, almost as if he was back on that rooftop reliving it. It seemed as though he wouldn’t speak, and Jean was going to answer for him, but then:

“Three.”

Shotgun didn’t so much as blink, but Jean felt like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. He tried to catch Eren’s eyes, but Eren wouldn’t look up from the floor.

“Okay,” Shotgun said. “Why?”

Eren still wasn’t looking up.

“Because I had to,” he said quietly. “They were going to kill us in our sleep, and I pushed them off a six-story building. It’s not like I wanted to, but they were going to kill us, and,” his eyes fluttered up for just a moment to meet Jean’s, “no matter what this jerk says, I don’t have a death wish.”

Shotgun studied him carefully for a long few seconds, and then nodded at the other two. They lowered their guns.

“Levi,” Shotgun said. “And this is Petra, Auruo. You two got names?”

“I’m Jean, that’s Eren.”

A curt nod. “Well, Jean and Eren. You got lucky today. We’ve got a group, a camp, about fifteen miles west of here. Food, cars, guns. You’re welcome to join us, provided you can follow our rules and contribute to the good of the group. Interested?”

Jean had stopped listening after “food.” A glance at Eren told him he was thinking the same thing.

“We’re in,” they said in unison.

“Great,” Levi said flatly. “Follow me. It’s time to start pulling your weight.”

 

 

<< 

 

 

The day it all started was a Monday, March thirteenth. Jean would never forget it, because it was the day before March fourteenth.

“Pi day?” Jean snorted. “Really? What are you, twelve?”

Marco smiled good-naturedly. “We get to drop a quiz score if we bring pie to lab tomorrow, so. If that makes me twelve, so be it.”

“That makes you a nerd,” Jean said. “You already have an A in that class.”

“Honestly, Jean, you sound like a hater,” Marco said. “And haters don’t get to eat pie.”

“Whatever,” Jean said. “Dude, I don’t think we even have, like. Pie ingredients.”

“Right, which is why I’m going to the store now,” Marco said, rolling his eyes. “You want anything?”

“We _are_ dangerously low on beer,” Jean said.

“I know for a fact that we’re not, but okay,” Marco said, still smiling. Warm and alive. “Just because you’re my little, I’ll buy you some beer. Happy?”

“Very happy,” Jean said with a grin. “You’re the best.”

 

 

>> 

 

 

The car they had at the moment, a battered mint-green ’92 Honda Accord, they’d lifted shortly after the nightmare on I-5 that Eren had begun irreverently referring to as the Zombie Parade.

“God,” Petra said, eyes wide, when they told her. “That’s awful. Lucky you made it out.”

“Yeah, we made it out,” Eren said. “The rest of our group didn’t.”

“I’m so sorry,” Petra said. She seemed nice. Outside the gas station, she’d asked if they were hurt, and offered up a couple of rock-hard granola bars from her pocket, which they’d scarfed down ravenously.

Levi, meanwhile was only interested in logistics. “So that’s why your car’s so empty.”

“Good thing we found you,” Auruo said cheerfully, “or you mighta starved to death!”

“How much gas you got?” Levi asked, once they’d loaded the Honda’s trunk with supplies scavenged from the skeleton of the small town’s main drag — car parts, mostly, but also a few canned goods, two bottles of laundry detergent, and, for whatever reason, a coil of garden hose.

“Least half a tank,” Jean said.

Levi nodded. “Should be plenty. Camp’s not far.”

The moment the other three had piled into their dusty white pickup, and Jean and Eren were alone in the Honda, Jean had to ask, because it had been burning in his mind this whole time:

“ _Three?_ ”

Eren stared straight ahead out the window at the cloud of dust kicking up behind the white pickup’s tires. “Drive.”

“You don’t get to just _say_ that and then never explain to me, Eren — ”

“They’re leaving already,” Eren said, “drive, Jean.”

Jean drove.

For a few minutes they sat in silence, and the only sounds were the rumbling of the engine and the rattling of the supplies in the back and the crunching of tires along the gravelly, pot-holed road. Jean felt sick to his stomach. And stupid. With the world broken in a million pieces around him, he more or less expected strangers to be shiftless, to not trust him, to lie. But he’d been on the road with Eren so long that he’d forgotten, somehow, that they still _were_ strangers, in a way, and that Eren could lie, too.

“I was going to tell you,” Eren said eventually. “Ever since… I’ve wanted to tell you for a while now, but I didn’t know how.”

Jean wasn’t in the mood for excuses. “Was it before we met, or after?”

“Before. Right before.”

Jean said nothing. They’d met so quickly after it all started, so if Eren had killed a person before…

“It was the day it got bad,” Eren went on. “There’s stuff I didn’t tell you about that day. Remember how I said I just found that car?”

Jean remembered. Eren had been driving an SUV, shiny new and laden with weapons and supplies. First aid, boxes of food, flashlights, blankets, water, guns and bullets, a hatchet and a bowie knife. Like he’d known how bad things would get, had known exactly what to prepare. He’d claimed he had a crazy survivalist neighbor who’d been bit in his own front lawn, and figured it was a shame to let the car and supplies go to waste. If Eren hadn’t taken it, someone else would have. Or so he’d said. It had sounded questionable, but Jean had quickly made the decision to not think about it too hard. The supplies had come in very handy very quickly.

“The truth is,” Eren said, taking a deep breath, “that car belonged to my dad.”

“Your dad?” Jean said. “But… your parents live up north.”

“They do,” Eren said. “Did. But my dad drove down to L.A. that day. Just showed up on my doorstep, told me to pack a bag and get in the car.”

“So he… so… Eren,” Jean said slowly. He didn’t want to ask anymore — he knew the answer already — but he needed to hear it. “Is your the dad the one that… you…”

Eren turned to look out his window. “I had to,” he said miserably. “You don’t understand, Jean. He was begging me to. Half his arm was…” He shuddered. “He was bit, Jean.”

Jean knew how that was. The pain in Eren’s voice was nothing he didn’t recognize. But something still wasn’t adding up.

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth back then?” Jean said. “Or — ever?”

“Because I still don’t know the truth,” Eren said. He had his hands in his lap, clenching and unclenching into fists. “He had some kind of plan. He knew all this was going to happen — he was trying to get us away. But how did he know? You’d have asked me that, if I’d tried to explain right when we met.”

“Yeah, but — ”

“And how could I have known, back then, that we would still be together now?” Eren said, almost as though to himself. “You were just some guy I had a class with freshman year. I figured we’d hole up together for a day or two and then go our separate ways. I couldn’t have known…”

“How long you’d be stuck with me?” Jean said sardonically.

“No, you dick,” Eren said. “How much I would care about you. Although god knows why I do, ’cause you’re an _asshole_.”

“ _You’re_ an asshole,” Jean said reflexively. Then, with more heat: “And a _liar_.”

“Fuck you, Jean,” Eren said tiredly. “I shot my dad in the head, alright? I didn’t want to talk about it. Or think about it. I still don’t.” He paused. “And I tried really hard not to lie. I suck at lying. I’m not a liar.”

“Whatever,” Jean said.

But that much, at least, he knew to be true. Eren was a bad liar. He was easy to read, wore his emotions proudly on his face, and it had cost them a couple of times in dealing with strangers. But it was also something that Jean really liked about Eren, normally. He’d liked it about him before they’d really known each other, back in that class they’d had together freshman year. Eren Jaeger said exactly what was on his mind, and even when he was wrong he spoke with such conviction. It made some people uncomfortable, but Jean was weirdly charmed, which annoyed him because he disagreed with almost everything Eren said. But maybe it was also because of how cute he was: carelessly, messily cute, with his farmer’s tan and his mis-matched socks, his second-day stubble and his unpardonable man-bun.

Remembering just how much he liked Eren pissed him off, for some reason.

“I’m sorry I lied,” Eren said now. His hands were loose, palms-up in his lap. “I should have told you the truth from the start. Just… say you forgive me.”

That wasn’t fair to ask, but Eren didn’t ever fight fair. The sting of the lie was deeper than a five minute conversation could absolve — how could Eren have lied to Jean about this for months, and blurted it out to Levi, a total stranger, within five minutes of meeting him? Jean was too practiced at holding grudges to let that go. Luckily, he was a better liar than Eren.

“Yeah,” he said. “I forgive you.”

 

 

<< 

 

 

The stories on the news were just that: stories. Third world tragedies. A few isolated incidents in the States, but nothing that strict quarantines and modern medicine couldn’t handle. Jean and Marco had kind of joked about it, even: better save New York for another summer, sure would ruin the road trip if they got eaten by zombies, right?

Monday, March thirteenth, at twelve, an emergency bulletin went out about the mystery virus hitting Skid Row. Monday, March thirteenth, at one, Marco stopped answering his texts. The two things weren’t necessarily related, but an uneasiness settled in Jean’s gut all the same.

By nine PM, everyone else in the house was gone, either home to their parents or gathered at the evac center on campus. Jean had refused staunchly: “Marco’s not back yet. I’m gonna wait for Marco.”

“Marco’s probably at the evacuation center, too,” Marlowe had argued. “Jean, c’mon. Don’t be like this.”

“If he’s there, he would have answered my texts,” Jean said. “I’m going to wait.”

Marlowe’d sighed. “Have it your way, then. Just… be safe. Keep the doors locked.”

Jean spent the night restless and on edge, pacing the upstairs to the endless wail of distant sirens. Sometime Tuesday morning he woke curled up on the couch with no memory of falling asleep. A day passed, then another. It could have been three. It could have been a week. Jean stopped keeping track. He drank his way through all the beer in the fridge, ate his way through all the cereal in the pantry, dry, straight from the box, thinking, “I should have told Marco we were out of milk.”

Around the time Marlowe stopped answering his texts, the sirens stopped, too. Jean was out of cereal and out of beer. He was sitting in the living room with a half-empty handle of vodka in his hand when he heard a jarring screech of tires from the sidewalk. Lightheaded, stumbling, he made it to the window just in time to see a big black SUV roll to a shuddering halt on the lawn, and Eren Jaeger tumble out of the driver’s seat.

 

 

>> 

 

 

Levi led them west a ways, past acres of withered crops and flat, empty fields of unsown soil, to a lonely road lined by scraggly trees. The gravel road became dirt, then gravel again; then they were turning off of it and down a side road, all weed-choked dust and ruts and bumps, that wound through a sparse poplar grove and into a wide open space. It was a farm, humming with activity.

They parked behind the white pickup in a clearing with several other cars, and a man Jean knew instinctively to be the group’s leader was standing there to greet them. Tall and sturdy and broad with a hip holster snug on his jeans, it could only be the Erwin that Petra had mentioned back at the gas station. He practically oozed authority.

“Welcome back, boys,” he said, striding over to them as they began unloading the cars. “Boys” included Petra, apparently, who nodded with a half-grin.

“Picked up a couple of kids,” Levi said off-handedly.

“I can see that.” Erwin’s eyes were deep-set, intense.

“The tall one is Jean, the angry one’s Eren,” Levi said. “Erwin’s the boss around here. He’s a cop.”

Erwin crossed his bulky arms. “I used to be.”

“We stole a cop car once,” Eren blurted out. Dumbass. But Erwin just laughed.

It was a good camp. They had guns, food, water. More than that, they had discipline. Other than the little kids who occasionally ran underfoot, everyone moved with purpose. Teenagers hand-washing laundry, a burly couple tending a cookfire, the men and women armored and armed — they’d all been together for months, knew their roles, operated like a well-oiled machine.

“We had a town,” Erwin explained as he gave them the tour, “walls and everything. Gone now — taken from us. But we’ll find another. That’s what we do — we don’t give up hope. We rebuild.”

Jean understood, now, the deference that rough, lawless Levi had showed for Erwin. How Petra invoking his name back at the gas station had kept Levi’s aggression in check. It was Erwin’s command that formed the backbone of this group: he was the steely core, but there was warmth to it, too. He called out the cause, and the rest rallied around it. Jean could see it in everyone’s eyes, the trust they had for their commander. Hell, he could _feel_ it. He’d met the man moments ago, yet he trusted him implicitly.

There were no walls here, but there was a smattering of trees, an abandoned farmhouse, a rickety barn, and acres of yellowed cropland all around — good visibility if they every got any unwanted visitors, and some decent structures for cover. A well drew relatively untainted water from the ground, that they could drink if they boiled. The road to the highway was cleared and flat, but inconspicuous. It wasn’t a town, wasn’t a home, but it felt settled-in, and comfortingly still, like solid ground after days on a rollicking boat. Jean couldn’t wait to be rid of his sea legs.

Erwin introduced them to a few of the other members of the group — “strong fighters, like yourselves” — who were part of a rotating crew in charge of making scouting and supply runs. Other than Levi, Petra and Auruo, there was Nanaba, Mike, and Pixis, who all greeted Eren and Jean cordially enough, but with a degree of mistrust in their eyes.

“Gunther and Jinn are out on a run,” Erwin said, “and Hange is in the barn doing… whatever it is that they do.”

“What do they do in the barn?” Eren wanted to know. But everyone just shrugged cryptically. 

“You can ask them at dinner,” Erwin said.

“Or you can not,” Levi muttered. “So we don’t all lose our appetites.”

There were murmurs of agreement. But it turned out he needn’t have worried: Hange didn’t show up to dinner.

Jean, in truth, barely noticed. He was too preoccupied with the food — real food, thick stew and canned peas and some type of mystery meat, none of it particularly tasty but more substantial than anything he’d had in days. He ate so much and so fast that he thought he might be sick, but Eren actually did get sick, which everyone seemed to find hilarious.

“You get some buckshot in your squirrel, son?” Auruo said. “Shoulda been me on hunting duty. They used to call me sharpshooter, back in the day.”

“They one hundred percent did not,” Petra said flatly.

“They did so,” Auruo insisted. “Didn’t I ever tell you about the time over in Santa Fe…”

After dinner, they were told to sit tight while someone tried to wrangle up a tent for them to sleep in.

“We’ll be okay in our car,” Jean said. “If anyone’s got an extra sleeping bag, though…”

“He gets cold,” Eren said.

At that, Petra offered to take them up to the house to look through the basement, where most of the camp’s miscellaneous supplies were stored.

“You said you guys were going home,” she said as they shone their flashlights over the shelves and neat, orderly rows of plastic bins. “Where’s home?”

“Bay area,” Jean said. “You heard anything about what’s going on up north?”

Petra shook her head. “Sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Eren said. He stopped in front of a bin labeled Camping Gear. “Crazy how it can be so close and so far at the same time.”

“Poetic,” Jean muttered. He cracked open the bin, swatted away a scuttling spider, and began digging through the haphazardly stored contents: several yards of shapeless canvas, a ripped blue tarp, a couple of tent stakes, some tin utensils, fishing lures, a broken camp stove, and, inexplicably, a single hiking boot. “Up north could be as fucked as down south, but we had to get out of L.A. It was… it was bad.”

“I heard awful things about L.A.,” Petra said, her voice going hushed. “Levi came from L.A. too, you know. He’s seen things.”

“Everyone has,” Jean said. At the back of the bin, a slightly musty brown sleeping bag. “This’ll work.”

“Oh, good,” Petra said. “And if there’s anything else you might need, just ask. Most of this stuff is basically up for grabs.”

“Thank you,” Eren said, and then, very earnestly, “Petra, I’m really glad you didn’t shoot us in the gas station.”

Petra laughed. “Me, too, Eren.”

They parked the car near to the cluster of RVs and pickups and tents, but not too near. It was dark under a low half-moon, and most of the rest of the group were turning in already, their flashlights off and tents zipped up. A couple of people were on night watch duty, perched up on top of the tallest vehicle with folding chairs and hunting rifles, but they kept quiet as well, so the only real sound was the crickets and cicadas and a distant owl, a gentle white noise Jean wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to. Before college he’d fallen asleep to a lullaby of cars and the thundering of trains from the tracks a few blocks away from his mom’s apartment; in college it had been the chaos of the dorm and then the slightly more tolerable chaos of his housemates. Silence broken only by bugs was still relatively new.

“You think there’s mildew in this?” Jean said, giving the brown sleeping bag a doubtful sniff.

“Right now, I don’t really care,” Eren said. He pulled the black sleeping bag they’d been using for months out of the trunk. “It can’t be worse than this one.”

“Fair enough,” muttered Jean, thinking of all they’d put that sleeping bag through.

With the rest of the trunk cleared out and the back seat folded all the way down, there really wasn’t enough room for two grown men to sleep in the Honda. That had stopped mattering a while ago, though. They spread out one sleeping bag unzipped on the floor as a mattress, the other on top as a blanket, and curled up together underneath. Eren smelled bad, unwashed, but Jean breathed it in, nosed his face into the crook of Eren’s collarbone and inhaled.

“Weirdo,” Eren said. His fingers found the seam of Jean’s now-shaggy undercut and scratched lazily. “Am I that enticing?”

“You’re just warm,” Jean said. He’d learned early on that Eren ran hot: his own personal space heater in the chill of desert nights. “Don’t take it personally.”

“Too late,” Eren said. He wrapped his smelly arms around Jean, pulled him in until their hips aligned, then pressed in to kiss him.

None of freshman Jean’s half-baked fantasies about hooking up with Eren Jaeger came anywhere close to the real thing. Probably because he’d always imagined it involving scented lube, sexy R&B playing on his old-school record player, and a decent amount of marijuana, and none of those things were around anymore. Or maybe because his mind could only produce soft core porn, and Eren did it hard, and rough.

They’d fucked that first night in Jean’s bed, the black SUV still parked crooked out on the lawn, both of them stupid drunk. The world was ending, so why not? No one had been around to hear them and they got loud: Eren whispering all kinds of dirty shit into Jean’s ear, Jean moaning and loving how it made Eren grip him tight enough to bruise.

Four months in, the world hadn’t ended yet and it was less _why not?_ and more _I need this_. Jean knew there were families sleeping in tents less than fifty feet away, but part of him didn’t care. He knew he was still mad at Eren for lying — but maybe he would always be mad about that, and it would just become another bad thing he learned to live with. Right at this moment, those things didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Eren’s mouth on his neck and Eren’s hand on his dick, stroking him fast and sure until he came, choking back a whimper that seemed to fill the muggy Honda nonetheless.

The world hadn’t ended yet, and until it did, Jean would have this: Eren Jaeger, smelling of sex, slinging a sweaty arm over him so they’d both be warm all night. Eren Jaeger, whose flame never flickered, whose blood never cooled, who promised Jean, day after day, that they would make it home, they would, he swore. Eren Jaeger, who could be slow on the uptake, who maybe didn’t yet realize that just by being there in the morning, day after day, he’d become Jean’s home already.

 

 

<< 

 

 

The morning after, Eren was being awkward about their one night stand, and Jean was massively hungover. It was the most normal he’d felt since March thirteenth.

“Can I use your shower?” Eren asked in a husky morning voice. He was sitting up naked in Jean’s bed, hair rumpled and still stupidly gorgeous.

“Yeah, go for it,” Jean said. “Hot water’s out, though.”

When Eren scooted off the bed and hurried out of the room cupping his junk, Jean felt a twinge of annoyance: _I’ve already seen your dick. I’ve been up close and personal with your dick. Why the fuck are you being self-conscious now?_

He stood up, and his headache crashed over him like a wave. The sunlight was too hot, the air in his bedroom too stale; he threw open the window and headed downstairs for some the cool shade of the kitchen and some ibuprofen. As he passed the living room window, which looked out on the front yard, he saw the big black SUV still parked haphazardly on the front lawn. Jean froze.

In the distance behind the SUV, shuffling and lurching, wending a zig-zag down the middle of the street, was something dead.

Jean had seen blurry photos, a few shaky video clips, had gotten a few brief stories from Eren yesterday about what they were like, the dead ones. But there was something much more heart-stoppingly terrifying about seeing one in real life: how unnatural the movements were, like nothing human, nothing living had ever moved. And the hair, the clothes, the shoes, all the remnants of a person’s life, now adorning the gray rot of a walking corpse. Everything about it was wrong, a monster in human skin, wildly out of place on the otherwise silent street.

It was horrifying, but something about it was fascinating, too. Jean stayed by the window and watched as the dead thing came closer and closer. It seemed to be heading, slowly and clumsily, for the SUV, or for the house. And after a minute or two, it was near enough for Jean to read the logo on the navy blue sweatshirt, to make out the shape of the matted brown hair.

Marco had come home.

The thing to do would be to kill him, Jean knew. That was what you did with the dead ones: you made them more dead. Eren had said it had to be the brain. So Jean went into the garage, where people stored all their miscellaneous shit — power tools, sports equipment, drug paraphernalia — and found a baseball bat. His hands tingled, every inch of him buzzing: a layer of static between him and reality. The bat wobbled in his hands. His headache had faded to a faint throb, but his heart had begun to beat furiously, vibrating in his chest hard, too hard.

Outside, Marco had made it onto the lawn. When Jean opened the front door, Marco’s head whipped up at the sound, and then he snarled a long, guttural hiss. Jean’s fingers went weak and loose around the grip of the bat.

This close, there was no doubt it was Marco. The clothes and the shoes alone would have given it away — how many times had Jean teased him mercilessly for those ratty, beat-up Vans? — but this close, Jean could see the face. Half of it was gone, ripped and chewed right down the to bone, the right eye socket dangling loose, shreds of flesh and skin just barely clinging to jaw and neck. The half that remained intact was bloodless and pale, the eye white a sickly pink and the iris dull and clouded, but still, it was Marco: the high cheekbones sprinkled with freckles, the sharp jaw, the neat brow.

“Don’t,” he choked out, a whisper, “Marco — ”

It smelled him now, and sped up, still rasping that foul, voiceless growl. The bat trembled in Jean’s hands and the air was thin, somehow, too thin to breathe as the dead thing bounded jerkily up the porch steps.

“Marco,” Jean said, his voice breaking, “It’s me, it’s Jean, please don’t — ”

He stumbled back a little. Marco’s ruined mouth was snapping at him, and the stench of rotten meat, laced with the iron of dried blood, washed over Jean. Then there were cold hands scrabbling at his face — the left hand little more than tendon and bones — and Jean went over backwards, landing hard on his back in the entrance of the house. The bat was still in his hands, but the dead thing atop him was too heavy, and he couldn’t get his arms free to swing it.

“Please,” he heard himself sob, “please, Marco, please don’t — ”

A bang louder than anything he had ever heard ricocheted through his skull, and his ears rang as Marco’s body collapsed onto his chest. When Jean looked up, Eren was standing there in a clean pair of boxers, a Glock in his outstretched hand.

“You okay?” Eren said. “Man, why’d you let that thing in?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Jean said, pushing the corpse off of him. Thick dark blood ran steady from the side of its head. “It was just… it was Marco.”

Eren leaned down to look at the body. “Marco Bodt? Fuck, I liked that guy. He was cool.”

“Yeah,” Jean swallowed. “He was.”

 

 

>> 

 

 

Hange kept a calendar — said they’d been keeping track of the days since the very beginning. It seemed like something someone science-minded would do, Jean supposed, and everyone called Hange the group’s resident mad scientist. He still didn’t know what Hange got up to in the barn, though he’d heard weird noises emanating from it once in a while, but he knew that Hange, like Erwin, was a big-picture type. Every so often they’d make a point of publicly announcing the date or the day of the week, as though expecting it to have some kind of effect on morale.

“Happy Tuesday! It’s August first!” they said cheerfully over an early morning breakfast of watery oatmeal. About half the camp was awake and seated in folding chairs around the cookfire. Groggy with sleep, Jean glared.

“Who cares if it’s August,” he said. “Time is an illusion.”

“Time-keeping is a critical mark of civilization,” Hange shot back instantly and cheerfully. “And you should care, Jean! It’s the monthiversary of you and Eren joining our camp!”

Next to him, Eren made a soft sound of surprise. “No way. Feels like we just got here last week.”

It did feel that way sometimes — but at others, Jean could hardly remember life before Erwin’s camp. There was constantly something to do or worry about: maintenance on the biter traps in the woods, watch duty along the perimeter of the tents, repair work on cars, the house, the well; and the main thing, going on runs. The camp was always in need of supplies, so that was a big part of it, but Erwin was serious about finding a place with walls. The day after Eren and Jean had joined the group, they’d been dispatched on a two-day scouting mission with Petra and Levi to find somewhere habitable, and after that they’d spent only a handful of nights actually back at camp. It was good to be back and be served breakfast.

“Monthiversary’s not a word,” Jean told Hange.

“Prove it,” they challenged, laughing.

Jean shot Eren an imploring look, and Eren said unhelpfully, “It _could_ be a word.”

“It’s not!” Jean said. “Someone back me up here. Levi?”

“I don’t give a shit,” Levi said dismissively. He was frowning. “August first, huh? So we have maybe a month and a half of summer left.”

“What are you thinking?” Petra asked quietly.

“I’m thinking we move up Hapford Hills,” Levi said. “Gunther says it’s promising. If we started today, we could have it cleaned up within a week. Be moved in two. And then plenty of time before winter sets in to get situated there, build up the defenses.”

Across the cookfire, Erwin steepled his fingers in thought. “Are the cars fueled up?”

“It won’t take much fuel to get there,” Gunther put in. Hapford Hills was his find, a gated community on the western edge of the nearest major town. If the gates could be fortified, it would be as good a place to rebuild as anywhere — spacious enough to stretch, to plot gardens, to put roofs over all their heads, but small enough to defend with their limited numbers. Everyone, but Gunther especially, had high hopes for Hapford Hills. “It’s not more than a twenty minute drive.”

“The cars are fueled,” said Nanaba. “Everyone _is_ all back now… we could go today, in theory.”

“Then I say we do it,” Erwin said decisively. “It’s our best shot so far. What do people think?”

There were various murmurs of assent from those assembled. Levi slurped down the last of his oatmeal, wiped his mouth with a mysteriously spotless handkerchief, and stood up.

“Scouting crew, finish eating,” he said. “We’ll take three cars. I want you ready to go in an hour.”

“I don’t know what an hour is,” Eren said, “because time is an illusion. Sir.”

Levi didn’t smile. “Be ready in an hour or I’ll feed your ass to the walkers.”

Eren choked a little on his oatmeal. “Yes, sir.”

 

 

 

Back in their two-man tent, Eren asked, “Do you think Levi gets off on being called sir?”

Jean snorted. “No. But I think you get off on calling him sir.”

“Don’t be gross,” Eren said, making a face.

It was quiet for a few minutes as they packed gear into their backpacks, and then Eren said, “So do you think this whole Happy Hills thing is legit?”

“Legit?” Jean said. “Sure. I mean, I want it to be. Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Eren said. “Yeah, I do, but…”

“But what?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Eren confessed, “about going home.”

Jean felt his stomach lurch, and the sense of comfort he always got when they were together in the tent drained away. “Eren — ”

“Let me finish,” Eren said. “It’s not what you think. I know that we have a good thing here, I don’t mean that I want to leave this group. But we aren’t that far — even with the highway fucked up, it wouldn’t take more than a day to get home. So if Happy Hills does clear… if we have someplace real to come back to… I just want to go and see for myself, Jean. I need to see it.”

 _See what?_ Jean wanted to retort. What was there back home? Anything different from what they’d left behind — anything but legions of disgusting, bloodthirsty corpses and piles of wreckage heaped on the sides of streets and broken glass and empty, ransacked buildings? Anything but chaos and violence? Anything that even remotely resembled “home”?

“Eren,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level. “Do you have an actual death wish?”

“I wish you’d quit fucking saying that to me,” Eren snapped.

“I wish you’d quit thinking of stupid plans that end with us both dead!” Jean said. “I mean, I get that you want to find your friends and your mom and everything, but if they’re anywhere, they’re not in the city. I don’t understand why you want to go back there.”

Eren pulled a face, bitter and strained and closed off.

“I don’t really understand, either,” he said quietly. “But I know there’s something at home for me. That’s where my dad and I were going to go — back home. There was a reason, there had to have been.”

“A reason.” Eren, he realized, was another big-picture type. Eren and his _reasons_ and his fucked-up relationship with his dead dad and his almost-lies. That was one of the main points of friction between them: Jean was okay with any version of surviving, and Eren just wasn’t.

“I have to know, Jean. There are answers back home. In my house.”

“And you just assume I’ll go with you,” Jean said, even though he knew that he would. The thought of being secure in Erwin’s group forever was a good one, but the thought of watching Eren drive away alone to certain death made Jean want to puke.

“I’m not assuming,” Eren said. “I’m just bringing it up. I’m _asking_ you.”

“You know what, let’s talk about it after this damn run is over,” Jean said. “Let’s just do one fucking thing at a time.”

 

 

 

They weren’t the last ones to be ready and assembled by the cars — that honor went to Auruo, who seemed to be immune to Levi’s murderous glares as he sauntered over by himself, whistling a jaunty tune. Even so, the sun had only barely risen when the crew rode out in the three cars. Pixis was staying behind to watch the camp, but most of the group’s seasoned fighters were going on this run. There was Levi, Petra and Jinn in the white pickup; Erwin, Mike, Nanaba and Hange in the battered Jeep; Eren, Jean, Gunther and Auruo in their ’92 Honda.  

Auruo’s favorite pursuit, they had learned, was regaling anyone who would listen with tales of his own heroics, most of which Jean now knew by heart.

“Tell the one about the biters in riot gear,” Eren said as they pulled out of camp.

“It was in Santa Monica, back in March,” Jean started. “The dead were everywhere…”

“Don’t be a damn fool,” Auruo said. “This was in Venice. It was March, just a couple of weeks after it all went down. The dead were _everywhere_ , and…”

They let Auruo tell the story, interrupting only a couple of times to remind him of embellishments he had neglected. When it was over, Eren clapped. Gunther rolled his eyes.

“You’re a hero,” Eren said. Then, “Auruo. You ever seen a biter swim?”

Auruo snorted. “No, but I’ve seen plenty of ’em sink. Didn’t I ever tell you about when we were out on the reservoir…”

“Please no,” Gunther cut him off.

Eren looked triumphant. “I told you! Jean, I told you they couldn’t swim.”

“I never said they could swim,” Jean said, “I said water wouldn’t kill them.”

“That’s a question for Hange,” Auruo said. “All’s I can say is that walkers are rotting bodies, and water rots ’em faster.”

“Alright, well how about this,” Eren said, “if you could, which one would you pick: a treehouse, or a houseboat? To be safe from biters.”

Auruo paused, considering. “I guess if I could fish, I’d go houseboat. Since I can’t, I’ll say treehouse.”

Jean stuck his tongue out at Eren.

“I have to say houseboat,” Gunther said. “I’m afraid of heights.”

Eren stuck his tongue out right back.

“But it’s irrelevant,” Gunther went on. “Because we’re going to have the safest option: a town.”

“True,” Auruo conceded. “The dead can’t climb or swim, but the living can do both. Houseboat, treehouse, they sound fun and all, but I’ll take walls and a machine gun any day.”

They parked a couple blocks out from gated residential area itself, in the parking lot of the Hapford Community Park. A jungle gym and elaborate play structure lay in a massive sandbox nearby, and across a rolling hill of unruly weeds was a wide, dusty baseball field. There were no other cars in the lot, and no people, undead or otherwise. No sound but the low, lazy buzzing of flies, and the rustle of wind through untrimmed grass.

“I have a good feeling about this,” Gunther said as they set off for Hapford Hills itself. “It’s so empty on this side of town.”

The rich side of town, Jean thought.

“Maybe they all got out,” Petra said.

“Hopefully they got far.” Levi hiked his pack up on his shoulders. “I don’t want to have to kill anyone today.”

Eren laughed nervously, but he was the only one.

The actual gate to Hapford Hills, a tall ornamental, wrought-iron affair, was open when they reached it. From inside, Jean could make out the faint guttural hissing that meant biters.

“Not good,” Mike said. He raised his nose in the air and took a deep sniff. “With the gate open, the inside could be infested.”

“It is good, actually,” Levi said. “Walkers, we can deal with. Gates closed would’ve meant people inside.”

They took the approach slow, quiet so as not to draw the biters near. There were bullets in Jean’s gun again, but he really didn’t want to use them. He wasn’t a very good shot, in the first place, and in the second, Levi, for all his shotgun-waving, was always telling them to use their knives when they could. “Guns are loud and ammo’s scarce.”

Inside the gates, the road split two ways. They broke into two groups, led by Gunther and Jinn, who’d been the ones to scout this place originally, and separated. Jean didn’t like being away from Eren, but there was nothing for it but to trust Erwin’s judgment.

“One thing at a time,” he reminded Eren before the groups split off. “Don’t die.”

“You too,” Eren said, reaching out to cup Jean’s face, unusually tender. Jean kissed Eren’s palm.

“You guys are so cute,” Petra sighed as they started down the right-hand street. “I can’t get over it.”

“I can,” Levi said.

There wasn’t much talk after that, as they made their way from house to house, inspecting each one up and down for biters, occasionally grabbing little treasures from cupboards and medicine cabinets. It reminded Jean of the early days, when it had been just him and Eren, roaming the abandoned suburbs of L.A. and looting as they pleased. It had felt wrong at first, but his hangups dissipated as food began to grow scarce, and now Jean was an old hand at this. He was good at grasping the layout of a house from the outside and the placement of the windows (it helped here in Hapford Hills that all the houses were basically the same), and good at taking in a room at a glance: where were the exits? Were there any signs of people? Of biters? And was there anything worth taking?

“Clear,” he called from bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, basements. For the first eight houses, the worst he encountered was a family of possums that had taken up residence in the back of a dresser drawer.

“I think Petra was right,” Mike remarked after a while. “I think these people probably got out.”

“How can you tell?” Auruo said. “They leave a scent trail?”

Mike ignored the dig. “Back there, you saw that wall of empty picture frames in the living room?”

“They had time to pack up and go,” Jean said slowly. Thinking about it like that made it hard not to wonder where the owners of these homes had got to, and if they were still alive or not. There was no point dwelling on it, but, still, Jean wondered.

The ninth house had a biter lurking restlessly in the dark basement, and it snapped angrily at Jean when he shined his flashlight down the stairs into its face.

“Got one,” he called, his heartbeat quickening.

“Just one?” Mike was at his side in an instant.

“Think so,” Jean said.

“You got it?”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t actually hard killing the things, if you could get close enough. One clean knife stroke through the eye socket and it could be over in a matter of seconds. Jean had done it enough times to have perfected the technique.

“I’ll shine a light down for you,” Mike said.

“Thanks.”

The hard part was when the things looked at you, and behind the blind bloodlust, you read something like fear in their eyes. The hard part was when your mind’s eye tricked you into seeing them as human, even though you knew they were nothing but monsters. Sometimes, every biter was Marco, and the hard part was swallowing the lump in his throat and taking his knife to the vile thing that used to be his best friend, over and over again.

Today, though, things were easy. This biter was long-haired, with a dress, and one of its legs was trapped behind a filing cabinet. That simplified things; Jean kept his flashlight beam low until he got close, then swung it up quickly into the biter’s face. It screeched, stunned, and Jean drove his knife hilt-deep in through the eye. The biter collapsed limply.

Jean picked his way carefully around the rest of the basement, letting his flashlight roam over every surface.

“Clear,” he called.

 

 

By midafternoon they’d made a full circuit of Hapford Hills, and the two groups met up again. Hange’s glasses were spattered with blood, and Eren was inexplicably dripping wet, but other than that no one was really worse for wear.

“You smell like a wet dog,” Jean said, doing his best not to focus on how Eren’s white T-shirt was now transparent and clinging deliciously to his chest. “I hope you don’t think you’re gonna ride in the car like that. What even happened to you?”

“Jean,” Eren said happily, “they have running water! And all the houses have solar panels and stuff, so Hange thinks we could get electricity too! Fuck yeah, Happy Hills!”

“And that inspired you to somehow inspired you start a wet T-shirt contest because…?” Levi said distastefully.

“Running water,” Jean breathed. “ _Hot_ running water…!”

“I told you so,” Gunther wasted no time in telling everyone. “I told you Hapford Hills was _it_.”

They spent another few hours combing through yards and along the inner perimeter of the walls for biters, turning up only a few stragglers. The majority had been roaming along the main streets, in such small numbers that they had posed no threat. Before the sun had begun to set, they filed out of Hapford Hills, closing the gate behind them, and Erwin proudly declared it, “Cleared.”

“I can’t believe that went so smoothly,” Jean said as they piled back into the cars.

“I can’t believe that this time tomorrow, we could be living in an actual _house_ ,” Eren said.

“I don’t think it’ll be as soon as tomorrow,” Auruo said.

“Still, though,” Eren said. “Soon.”

 _How soon?_ Jean thought. And how soon after that would Eren want to go on his suicide run up north?

“Let’s focus on tonight,” Auruo said. “When we get back, I say we dig into the old liquor cabinet. We should have a party, I think we’ve more than earned it.”

“A party, eh?” Eren said. He waggled his eyebrows at Jean. “That sounds good. I know _I_ feel like celebrating.”

By which he plainly meant, “I know _I’m_ getting laid tonight.” Eren always wanted to get frisky after run-ins with biters.

“You’re such a freak,” Jean said.

Eren laughed. “But I’m _your_ freak.”

Jean smiled despite himself. In the back seat, Gunther and Auruo were already chatting animatedly about how they were going to get totally blasted off the farmhouse’s home-brewed moonshine, so neither of them noticed Eren and Jean holding hands, fingers interlinked over the parking brake lever. Eren’s skin was hot to the touch, as usual. As usual, Jean liked it.

They’d fight about going north tomorrow. Jean knew how that would go, knew Eren and his moronic optimism inside and out, and he knew that he would give in, because he was weak. So that could wait. His sweetness now made all the insufferable episodes worth it: his smile and the touch of his palm. The mischievous glint in his eye as he whispered innuendo that would’ve had Levi scrubbing his mouth out with soap. Just everything about him in his still-damp shirt, sitting next to Jean and saying, “I’m yours.” Warm and alive.

 

 

<< 

 

 

They buried Marco in the backyard of the frat house. By the time he’d finished digging the hole, then shoveling the dirt back in over the body, Jean was too exhausted to make any attempt at a memorial, so it was Eren who clasped his hands together, cleared his throat and said,

“Marco. You were a good friend, and an all-around good person. You probably don’t remember the time you helped me pick up a bunch of books I had dropped in the quad, but I do, and I swear to god I’ll never forget it. I was a weird freshman, and you smiled at me like I was your best friend in the world, which made me want to be. We weren’t that close, but you were always a great guy. To me, and to everyone. You’re gonna be missed, buddy.”

Jean’s throat was tight. There were no words for this.

“I’m — going to miss you,” he managed jerkily. He couldn’t bring himself to say the name. “You’re — in a better place but — I’m really going to miss you.”

That night they got drunk again, but didn’t hook up. Instead, Eren smoothed back Jean’s hair as he threw up, head spinning wildly, in the upstairs bathroom.

“Let it out,” Eren told him, his hands hot and soothing on Jean’s shoulder blades, “just let it out. It’s okay.”

“Thanks,” Jean told him the next day, pale-faced and still somewhat nauseous as he sat up in bed. “I’m sorry for last night, I was such a mess.”

“You’re allowed to be a mess,” Eren said. “Your — Marco just died.”

Through his throbbing headache, Jean squinted at Eren. “My what?”

“Oh,” Eren said, looking uncharacteristically hesitant. “I wasn’t sure if you two were, like…”

Jean rolled his eyes. The pain of it put him horizontal again.

“He was my best friend,” Jean said, and the pain of _that_ made his heart clench. “We were like family. No, he was better than my real family.”

“Right,” Eren said. “Right, yeah.”

“I wouldn’t have had sex with you if I had a boyfriend,” Jean said pointedly, just to see Eren’s cheeks go pink.

“Of course,” Eren said. He scratched the back of his head. “It’s just, I mean, they say the usual rules don’t apply when you’re living in the zombie apocalypse, so…”

“Is that right,” Jean said. “So do _you_ have a boyfriend?”

“No,” Eren said quickly.

Jean suddenly felt like he shouldn’t have asked that. Like he was going to fall into his own trap.

“Well,” he said lamely, “cool.”

“Jean,” Eren said suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“Jean, _fuck_ ,” he ran over to the window, “I think we need to go.”

Jean sat up. Through the open window he heard the rasp of wordless voices and the drag of clumsy footsteps. The dead were out on the street, and if he could hear them so clearly from the second floor —

“How many?” he asked, but a glance at Eren’s tightened jaw and curled fist told him that it was a lot.

“Get your shit, we’re taking my car,” Eren said.

“Now?”

“Now.”

Jean didn’t know what shit he was supposed to be grabbing, but Eren had already sprinted down the stairs. Gritting his teeth against the wave of nausea that rose as he stood, Jean made his way to the window. And now he understood Eren’s reaction.

It wasn’t _a lot_ of walkers. It was a _horde._ Only a few had actually made it as far as the house, but Jean could see down at the corner where the main pack were shuffling along in one wild, growling mass. They were moving slowly, but there were so many of them, pushing and straining against each other, spilling over the sidewalk and trampling the neighbors’ yards, all of them pallid and restless and hungry.

“Jean!” Eren yelled urgently.

“Coming!”

There wasn’t time to pack anything. Jean pulled on the closest pair of shoes he could find and snagged a sweatshirt and a pair of pants from the top of his hamper. He was only wearing a T-shirt and boxers, but that was fine; the undead would try to eat him whether or not he was dressed for the occasion.

Eren was waiting for him just inside the front door with his rucksack. He opened it to let Jean stuff his clothes in, and then gestured meaningfully at the baseball bat from the day before. Jean picked it up, his fingers shaking.

“We’re going to make a run for the car,” he said. In his hand was the gun that had ended Marco. “If one of them gets near you, bash its fucking brains in. Then keep running. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jean heard himself say.

Then Eren threw open the door and they were through it, into the too-bright sunlight, making a mad dash for the SUV. It was still parked at a slant on the lawn, so Jean had to run to the far side to get into the passenger’s seat. As he rounded the hood, a lone biter caught his scent and started for him from the sidewalk.

“The brain!” Eren reminded him.

“Fuck,” Jean said, and swung. There was a horrible wet crack, and the thing staggered back a pace. Jean wound up and struck again, and again, each time harder than before; the thing had stopped moving but Jean kept swinging, until there was blood and gray matter pooling beneath the corpse at his feet.

 _Get in the car_ , Eren might have been saying. Jean’s ears were buzzing too much to know for sure. The smell of death and gore filled his nose and mouth, and he started to retch.

_Jean! Get in the car!_

The next thing he knew for certain was that they drove away. How he got into the car, he had no idea. Eren drove fast, skidding around corners and ignoring all traffic lights. He didn’t stop until they were miles away, in some other residential area, secluded and shaded with trees.

For a few minutes they sat in the parked car in silence. Jean’s mouth tasted of bile, and eventually, when his breathing had slowed to normal, he twisted around in his seat to look for a water bottle in the back.

“Things really need to stop happening while I’m hungover,” he said.

Eren laughed tremulously. “Maybe it’s time for you to stop drinking.”

Jean saw that Eren was pale, his hands clamped tight on the steering wheel. There was vomit on the front of his shirt.

“Did I… throw up on you?” Jean said, a little ashamed. Maybe Eren had been the one to get him into the car.

“A little bit,” Eren said. Then, teasingly, “’Cause you’re such a lightweight.”

“I’m sorry,” Jean said, repulsed. Eren waved off his apology and simply peeled off his shirt. Jean abruptly looked away.

“That’s life,” he said. “But seriously, for both of our sakes, you shouldn’t drink so much. If we ever _do_ get a chance to get drunk again, that is.”

“Okay,” Jean said. There was something about the way Eren said ‘we’ that made him feel warm all over. Then it dawned on him, “I guess going back to the house isn’t an option now.”

“Not really, no.”

As the adrenaline of their escape wore off, that sank in: that he had nothing left in the world but the clothes on his back; that every picture, every memento of his friends, of Marco, of his old life, were gone for good; that the world as he knew it had really, truly disappeared.

Well.

There was still Eren Jaeger.

Jean let out a long breath. “Fuck, man. I guess it’s up to you, since you’re driving. Where to now?”

“Now?” Eren said thoughtfully. “How would you feel about going north?”

 

 

>> 

 

 

They heard the gunfire halfway down the farm road that led to camp.

“No,” Gunther said in a hushed voice, his face drawn.

“Camp’s under attack,” Auruo barked. “Step on it!”

Jean didn’t have to be told twice. The Honda shot down the road, bouncing recklessly over potholes and kicking up a dust trail six feet high. As they drew closer, they could see that the camp was in chaos. Tents were collapsed, people were running and screaming hysterically, and far off in the distance, dark gray dots were slowly making their way through fields towards the ruckus.

“This better not be the work of those fuckers from the prison,” Auruo snarled.

“It’s walkers,” Gunther said. “Wasn’t anyone on lookout duty? Where’s Pixis?”

The Honda slammed to a stop just short of where the other cars were already parked.

“Get survivors into the house and secure the perimeter,” Erwin was bellowing from the yard. The scouting crew had already begun to do just that, herding people into the house and fending off the biters that were creeping in ones and twos up from the fields. Down in the camp, by the tents, there was something of a feeding frenzy, and the agonized screams of the dying reached them clear as a bell. Eren flicked off his safety and began running down the slope.

Whether he thought he was going to save anyone, or whether it was the contents of their tent he was after, or whether he just wanted to kill some biters, Jean didn’t know. Levi and Mike both started down into the camp as well, and Hange was in a flat-out sprint for the barn.

“Don’t die,” Jean screamed at Eren, before pulling the crowbar out of his belt loop and following.

The knife was good for when you had the luxury of precision. But like this, in a melee, you were better off with something you could swing wide. Back in L.A., he’d used the wooden baseball bat for a while; but a crowbar was heavier, and sharper. Strike fast and hard enough, and it made for quick kills.

The din of gunfire and the moaning of the undead and the rending of flesh and the cracking of bones filled Jean’s ears, and his vision went tunnel: there was only the constant stream of biters and the rhythmic thud of his crowbar. Most of these weren’t fresh, but weather-worn, muddy and gaunt. As Jean, Levi, and Mike worked their way to the tents, they left a swath of moldy corpses in their wake. But for every biter they cut down, another one soon popped up to take its place.

“It’s no use,” Mike yelled. “There’s way too many!”

“Fall back,” Levi commanded, then louder, “Eren! Fall back!”

Biters had begun to clog the way back up to the house; the clearest path was to the barn. Levi and Mike had already started in that direction, but Eren hadn’t yet emerged from the chaos of the tents. Most of the biters were occupied with tearing into one of the fresh corpses nearby that Jean recognized and wished he didn’t. Pixis had died trying to protect the tents, it seemed. But fresh blood wouldn’t distract the biters forever, and if Eren didn’t get out soon —

“Run!” Eren burst out of the crowd of biters, covered in grime and blood, “Jean, go!”

Levi was waiting in the barn when they got there, and slammed the door shut behind them. Then he turned, swore, and fired off five shots without warning. Jean’s ears rang with the shock, and then the rest of him tried to catch up and process what had just happened.

It took his eyes a second to adjust to the dim lighting, but then several things fell into sharp focus. A number of rolling tables, covered in a clutter of metal instruments and various tubes, bottles and jars. Hange, crumpled to their knees, hands thrown over their eyes. On the far side of the barn, chained spread-eagle to the wall by short iron links, five biters with their heads blown open.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Hange sobbed.

“I’ve had enough,” Levi spat, “of your _damn_ experiments. I always said it was too risky. Did you lock the door before we left today?”

Hange had no coherent response.

“You forgot, didn’t you? Anyone could’ve gotten in here and gotten bit,” Levi continued, pacing now. “You put the entire camp in jeopardy for the foolhardy chase of a cure we all know doesn’t exist. I’ve had _enough_.”

Jean could only gape. _This_ was what Hange had been up to in the barn?

Too much was happening, all at once. Less than an hour ago the world had been so bright and hopeful, and now everything was crashing down around him. His arguments with Eren felt like the inconsequential squabbles of toddlers. Biters in the barn and the camp in ruins, Pixis dead, Jean’s head was spinning. Only the fierce set of Eren’s green eyes kept him grounded, alert.

Mike put his ear to the door. “Levi, we better get out of here before they crowd the path.”

Levi nodded. “Get up,” he barked at Hange. To Eren and Jean: “You got ammo? We’re gonna get back up to the house and knock out as many walkers as we can on the way. Be ready to hit a circle formation on my signal — what the fuck is that?”

This last was directed at Eren, who jumped.

“Nothing.”

Levi’s eyes narrowed, and his arm shot out to grab the collar of Eren’s shirt. He yanked it down, and Jean’s heart stopped as he saw the unmistakable crescent imprint of a bite, ugly and red at the juncture of neck and shoulder.

“No,” he said blankly. Eren had been so covered in biter blood, Jean hadn’t registered the mark at all. Levi, who didn’t miss anything, retracted his hand and now looked furious.

“It’s nothing,” Eren said unconvincingly. The bite was shallow, but they all knew it didn’t have to be deep to infect you. Even a scratch was enough. And it was high up – no place they could amputate. Which meant there was nothing to do but wait for Eren to die, and then turn.

In a flash, Levi’s gun was at Eren’s temple.

“This isn’t personal,” he said, “but I’m done taking risks.”

“NO,” Jean said loudly. His hands shook with a white rage. “Back the fuck off.”

“Let’s deal with this when we get back up to the house,” Mike urged.

“Not while he’s still human,” Hange said shakily.

“Not ever,” Jean said fiercely. His lips felt numb. “Don’t fucking touch him.”

“I would rather die human,” Eren said quietly.

Levi cocked his gun. “You see?”

“I said, _no_ ,” Jean repeated, hysterical. He clutched at Eren’s arm. “ _Don’t_.”

“Levi, let’s go,” Mike said. “Come on. Not now.”

“He’s not staying,” Levi told Jean. The anger in his eyes had cooled to something closer to sadness. “We don’t keep what we can’t save. He’s going, one way or the other.”

“We’ll go then,” Jean said desperately. “We’ll leave.”

Levi studied him, and then shrugged, turning to the barn door. “Do as you like.”

 

 

 

The twilit camp was thick with biters now, and the trek back up to the house was punctuated with short struggles that Jean was only aware of in vague impressions. Mike decapitating a biter with a single stroke of his hatchet. Hange’s cracked glasses reflecting the last pink rays of the setting sun. Eren at his back, the two of them leaning on each other for purchase as they hacked at the onslaught.

By the time they were back at the house, Jean’s lungs were burning and his arms were sore with the strain of hefting his crowbar, but there was no time to rest. They went with the others up onto the porch, but as Levi and Mike were hurrying to meet up with Erwin and establish a plan, Jean was tugging Eren towards the cars.

“Come on,” he said, “it’s now or never.”

“You meant it, about leaving?” Eren looked doubtful.

“I meant it,” Jean said. “I’m not going to stick around and watch Levi put you down like an animal.”

It was easy enough to make a break for it. When Jean turned to look over his shoulder one last time, Levi was standing on the porch watching them go, his expression unreadable. If he’d wanted to stop them from taking the Honda and all the gear in it, he could have. But he didn’t. Jean and Eren threw themselves into the car, Jean slammed his foot on the gas, and they sped back up the farm road towards the highway.

 

 

 

“You should go back,” Eren said quietly when they’d been driving an hour. It was dark out now, and since driving with headlights made Jean uneasy, they were looking for somewhere to hunker down for the night. “You know, after I’m…”

“Please don’t say it,” Jean said wearily. “I don’t want to think about it.”

“It’s gonna happen whether you think about it or not,” Eren said. “I’m just saying, if you want to survive, it’ll be easier with the group instead of alone. They’d let you back in, for sure.”

“You’re such a fucking jerk,” Jean snapped. “You’re such a selfish fucking asshole.”

“What?” Eren said, startled. “I’m just saying…”

“Shut up,” Jean said. “Just shut up.”

They eventually ended up parking the car behind a broken down shed off a dirt road in the hills. There was a dusty looking farmhouse up a long winding driveway, but neither of them had the energy to investigate. Safely secluded, they now had a chance to take stock of Eren’s bite.

“Does it hurt?” Jean asked as Eren pulled his filthy T-shirt off over his head. The moon cast a little pale light over them, but not enough to see clearly, so Jean rummaged around in the front seat for his flashlight and flicked it on.

“It’s not bad,” Eren said. It looked bad, though. It was a relatively shallow bite; only the skin had been punctured, and the flesh itself was intact. But the teeth marks, bright red before, had gone an alarming shade of dark purple. “I can’t tell if I have a fever yet.”

Jean touched Eren’s forehead to his, and he couldn’t tell either. Eren was always too hot.

They washed the bite wound with the last of the water that was in the car, and bandaged it with strips torn from the least dirty parts of their shirts. With nothing to do and no dinner to eat, they folded down the back seat of the car and lay down together, Eren’s arms wrapped around Jean in the absence of a blanket. It felt almost normal, like how they’d passed so many nights before. It seemed absurd that Eren, even now so sturdy and warm, could ever die — not beautiful, infuriating, big-picture Eren.

“You’re a selfish bastard,” Jean told him, running his hand slowly up and down Eren’s back, feeling the contours of it. Memorizing each line, each muscle. He hated himself for being mean when they didn’t have much time left, but he hated Eren more for getting bit. For crashing into his life unannounced and being a good kisser and saving his life and then just fucking _leaving_.

“Don’t be mad at me for going first,” Eren said. “It’s not like I want to.”

He’d been so calm and stoic ever since the bite, but now, for the first time, a tremor crept into his voice.

“I know,” Jean said, a little ashamed.

“I have so much more I want to do,” Eren whispered. “So much I want to know.”

“Yeah,” Jean said thickly.

“But Jean,” Eren’s arms around him tightened, “I’m so glad it was you in the house that day.”

Jean took a steadying breath so as not to cry. If Eren could be brave about this, so could he.

“Me, too,” he said finally. “I’m glad it was you, too.”

 

 

 

At sunrise, they set off for the coast. Eren had always talked about how much he loved the sea, and Jean liked to shoot down talk of houseboats, but he’d be the first to admit that the ocean suited Eren: it matched his eyes perfectly.

They ran out of gas a mile from the coastal highway, and left the Honda on the side of the road to walk the rest of the way. When they were close enough to smell salt on the wind, they started to run. A scrubby footpath dipped down from the road, through scratchy brush, and onto a smooth, sandy beach. Grinning, Eren kicked off his shoes and socks, rolled up the bottom of his pants and ran out, ankle deep into the surf. Jean paused before following suit, just to capture the image in his mind for later. The sunlight glimmered gold on the wave tops of the blue-gray sea and orange on the tops of Eren’s bare shoulders. He turned, bright and beckoning; breathtaking. Jean’s chest ached unbearably, and he broke out into a run.

“Coming,” he called. Smiling, he joined Eren in the water.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading if you got this far ^^ Feedback is always appreciated!  
> Also you can hit me up on [tumblr](http://gnatnip.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/gnatnips) if that's your thing!


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